im sure if Tim had a choice between closing down his studio or laying off 10 people he would lay off the 10 people.
I think the point is (and of course this is a "in a perfect world" kind of statement) proper planning and management wouldn't put you in that position.
things still happen and nobody would blame one put in that decision for making the tough call...but it seems that this behavior has become fairly common practice, when it should be something only necessary when things go wrong.
bloating your staff to hit an unreasonable deadline and then cutting the employees loose as soon as a project is over is not the practice of a sustainable team or a responsible company.
If we want to pretend not to be completely project-driven as an industry we need to manage ourselves so that we're not. otherwise we're just temporary production teams playing house for a while.
I think the point is (and of course this is a "in a perfect world" kind of statement) proper planning and management wouldn't put you in that position.
This is what I'm thinking. Unless hire-and-fire is part of your business plan, then firing folks is usually a sign that some things aren't working out as planned. On the other hand, if that's how your business operates then it would be fair to tell people that this is gonna happen.
What sucks in our industry are companies who want you "to be part of the family", who tell you "how great things are" and a week later you get a pink slip, wondering where this is coming from when everything is supposed to be "so great". If companies were more up-front then there wouldn't be so many disillusioned artists. But then again, if you know this is gonna happening, you might not sign the contract in the first place. Even though, when you work in games the paranoia of sudden firings is always there somewhere in your head
I think the point is (and of course this is a "in a perfect world" kind of statement) proper planning and management wouldn't put you in that position.
things still happen and nobody would blame one put in that decision for making the tough call...but it seems that this behavior has become fairly common practice, when it should be something only necessary when things go wrong.
bloating your staff to hit an unreasonable deadline and then cutting the employees loose as soon as a project is over is not the practice of a sustainable team or a responsible company.
If we want to pretend not to be completely project-driven as an industry we need to manage ourselves so that we're not. otherwise we're just temporary production teams playing house for a while.
I do agree with you i think its disgusting how some companies treat there employees, im guessing that why the Vancouver scene is basically all contracted work nowadays
I know a couple people that left Bioware because they didn't feel secure, both incredibly skilled. Now if you can't atleast provide the illusion of job security to your staff you'll end up paying for it in another way, whether it is taking on less experienced people or paying your experienced staff more. Loyalty is actually worth money, it's just hard to explain this to investors or put it on a quarterly. Loyalty is up 10%
Loyalty is actually worth money, it's just hard to explain this to investors or put it on a quarterly. Loyalty is up 10%
The crazy thing is that in the games industry, loyalty isn't necessarily a matter of only money. There are plenty of people who just love making games, and would actually settle for a lower salary in order to make games all the time. Thanks to the rabid desire to work in games, most companies can get good, even great employees for very reasonable salaries. And most of those employees aren't usually looking to rush off to the next company to offer more money. They tend to want to finish whatever game they are working on before even considering other employment.
At the point, the burden of loyalty is really on the employer. And treating your staff in a seasonal manner is not going to cut it. Even if the industry starts moving more toward contract employment, most of these companies need to maintain a core team to provide consistency and direction to design. And that core team cannot be getting trimmed down and bloated up every year.
Unfortunately, that's where the money really comes into play. Per-hour, salaried employees are cheaper in the games industry than hourly contractors. And this isn't because the salaried employees are getting paid too little, or because the hourly contractors are charging too much. It's because the salaried employees are working so many hours. A salaried employee is much more affordable than a contractor when you can expect 80+ hours from them every week.
It's unfortunate that because we all love what we do so much has put us in a position to be taken advantage of so badly. And as much as I know that a lot of great artists are being displaced by these studio shut-downs it's at least good in one way - it seems indicative of the fact that the practices generally used by these huge companies aren't working..and it's becoming more and more apparent to them. The hope is that it will ultimately be good medicine, even though it's painful, and lead to more small studios being run in a way that's more beneficial to the employees, the consumers and the industry as a whole.
I have a feeling that if suddenly programmers weren't able to get salary offers higher than 30-40k, a lot of them would say "Screw this, I'll take my C++ skills and work in another industry that pays better, and maybe make games as a hobby at home."
this is where I feel bad for games designers most of all. This is not to say all designers are the same, but for those whose focus is in games they have so few avenues to choose from and such a great opportunity to be exploited. Game designers aren't ordinary designers: when fired they can't just go get a job in a different field. they don't make art because they like art, they can't just code because they like code, they can only make games because they like games. Even if their skills were easily transferable I'm sure many won't feel fulfilled in non-games jobs.
Also, you have to look at the hundreds of successful mid / large sized companies that aren't laying people off also. We get a grim picture that is slightly disproportional to reality.
Also, you have to look at the hundreds of successful mid / large sized companies that aren't laying people off also. We get a grim picture that is slightly disproportional to reality.
Unions don't have an impact on hire/fire directly and wouldn't have much impact on layoffs. They usually address working conditions: overtime, health benefits, retirement, wage levels, training, etc.
A union is a democratic organization, so the members vote on what is important to them and bargain collectively to get the working conditions they want. Every union is different.
Mid-size studios are pretty much dead because the big publishers are almost exclusively funding mega-projects. NPD numbers show a drop in the overall volume of game sales mostly due to a drop in the production of mid-size games.
Indie developers are having a much bigger impact on game development. The more indies, the better.
The reality is hardware and CPU power have driven development costs and team sizes to unmanagable sizes. The industry needs to be automated, over the coming decades procedural generation tools will bring team sizes and budgets back down to more reasonable sizes.
Game industries growth over the last 10 years is a chimera, you have many people who play only certain videogames because of differences in aesthetic tastes.
You have people who JUST play call of duty, you have people who JUST play World of warcraft.
The size of the 'true gamer' market (people who play a wide variety of games) is smaller then people who stick to a few core genre's. This is why Call of duty is such a phenomenon. I was bored of first person shooters after 2000 but newer generations who never grew up on PC games, they are experiencing shooters for the first time. There is a lot of generational turn-over that causes the same games to be remade because there's always a fresh batch of kiddies with no gaming experience to take the place of older gamers.
The reality is hardware and CPU power have driven development costs and team sizes to unmanagable sizes. The industry needs to be automated, over the coming decades procedural generation tools will bring team sizes and budgets back down to more reasonable sizes.
Game industries growth over the last 10 years is a chimera, you have many people who play only certain videogames because of differences in aesthetic tastes.
You have people who JUST play call of duty, you have people who JUST play World of warcraft.
The size of the 'true gamer' market (people who play a wide variety of games) is smaller then people who stick to a few core genre's. This is why Call of duty is such a phenomenon. I was bored of first person shooters after 2000 but newer generations who never grew up on PC games, they are experiencing shooters for the first time. There is a lot of generational turn-over that causes the same games to be remade because there's always a fresh batch of kiddies with no gaming experience to take the place of older gamers.
Maybe, but don't forget that when you're trying to pull every single trick in the book to get good looking models which are limited to 4-5 year old budget into your kaput engine which doesn't read certain data or formats correctly, you're just asking for extra cost, if you spend an extra 15 minutes (and I'm being charitable here) in having your artist run through a few loops before finalizing the models, that 15 minute, when crossed with say 10 artists, will be about 150 minutes, if that's per asset from an artist, and each artist has to make 10 assets, that's 1500 minutes in total from all these peeps, that time and money being spent from a person and the company in doing something, that on an efficient pipeline, engine and process wouldn't have to go through, so there is only so much procedural process can save your ass.
Then there is the cost of non-unified systems of the consoles, not to mention 'entry' fee, 40K for a patch may not sound much on paper, but if you're going to be pushing a patch every few weeks, it's going to make a nice dent.
And trust, I have seen my fair of share of procedural middle-ware that are used as miracle cures, before it all comes crashing down at the last minute due to many internal issues, not to mention, their limitations which will almost always force on-site training or hiring a new person to work on it.
Also; There is a large difference between hiring loads of people to create a massive/polished game, vs. hiring loads of people because everyone has some very specific small job to do, while still asking for a flat-base salary. It's kinda like how many people hire ONLY textures artist, or ONLY sculptors, etc. when a competent artist should be able to do those things (unless you're looking for say a Sculptor who is also a Concept artist and will help you define color scheme's and material definition ideas, in which case they're not ONLY sculptors).
Then some studios also do this extremely stupid step of 'scanning' assets before forwarding it to an artist so he can process it game viable iteration. Games like LA Noire has reasons, and you can see results, yet scanning a claymade monster, from which the artist will need to add the extra detail and color later on just is asking for extra cost for no reason. Maybe this was viable in the 90's, when organic sculpting tools were dead in the market, but now?
I agree with the idea of greying-nation, in which generation get older while new ones move in, so you have to cater to the new ones at one point, but at the same time, why reinvent and reinvest large numbers of wad in something to make it different? I mean look at Syndicate and XCOM debacle? Syndicate barely made it our alive and is even a flop, yet XCOM kept it to old basics, added/removed a few things here and there for new age kiddies and presto, done! Did fantastic in the sale figures. One cost more then the other, when it could have made money if it's kept it small.
And trust, I have seen my fair of share of procedural middle-ware that are used as miracle cures, before it all comes crashing down at the last minute due to many internal issues, not to mention, their limitations which will almost always force on-site training or hiring a new person to work on it.
In terms of procedural generation, it never was meant to be a cure-all hence I said it's going to take DECADES to bring down costs. Perhaps I should have just said "improvement in tools and techniques" since that is what I was thinking when I said that.
Basically - solving major problems and getting rid of bottle necks, still going to take decades though. The reason THQ and many other developers went under was because of the relentless advancement of hardware power. Even iD software had massive problems even just finishing rage, rage was a disaster as a game because they just didn't have the skills/funds/know how. This is coming from a former 'legend' in video game development. It just goes to show you game production times have exceeded even the most talented of humans to make within reasonable time frames.
Developers were un-prepared to make "virtual movie like action games" like call of duty that many people have been trying to ape. The skills required to make modern games are basically superhuman and thats why we've seen so many flame outs over the last decade, studios were dying left and right even at the end of the mid to late 90's lets not forget.
Volition was on the brink after interplay went belly up, Outrage (who made Descent 3) got disbanded when Descent 3 didn't sell as well as they wanted. That was largely because of the advancement of hardware power, you needed to sell an insane amount of more games to break even and even more to profit. Looking back developers and publishers seemed almost dangerously naive, there was the whole Daikatana incident, then duke nukem forever which was vaporware for 12 years. These stories aren't exactly uncommon.
All those closed studios couldn't afford to make shiny graphics due to lack of talent, funds, etc.
CPU/GPU power is the big elephant in the room, you might say hardware killed videogame business model for low to mid range games for consoles and PC's.
The reality is hardware and CPU power have driven development costs and team sizes to unmanagable sizes. The industry needs to be automated, over the coming decades procedural generation tools will bring team sizes and budgets back down to more reasonable sizes.
Well, yeah, but not every team needs to be the size of the Assassins Creed team or Diablos, BF3s or CoDs. You could still make great games like Journey on a high end console and make it look good, you don't have to utilize every ounce of computing power to make a realistic type of game.
I don't get the obsession publishers and AAA game develeopers in general seem to have with pushing everything into every game they make (crafting, coop, competitive multiplayer with a leveling system a la CoD, a single player campaign with dlcs etc).
If you want to make a game like that then yeah, you'll need 200-1000 people working on it for a couple of years but if you just take one of those elements then you probably don't need more than 50 people and you can still make it a really great product. Sometimes I feel like the addition of all these extra game modes and also our expectations of games are diluting the finished product and we end up with mediocre or simplified single player campaigns, weak multiplayer and coop and a crafting system that's just feels out of place.
Well, yeah, but not every team needs to be the size of the Assassins Creed team or Diablos, BF3s or CoDs. You could still make great games like Journey on a high end console and make it look good, you don't have to utilize every ounce of computing power to make a realistic type of game.
I don't get the obsession publishers and AAA game develeopers in general seem to have with pushing everything into every game they make (crafting, coop, competitive multiplayer with a leveling system a la CoD, a single player campaign with dlcs etc).
If you want to make a game like that then yeah, you'll need 200-1000 people working on it for a couple of years but if you just take one of those elements then you probably don't need more than 50 people and you can still make it a really great product. Sometimes I feel like the addition of all these extra game modes and also our expectations of games are diluting the finished product and we end up with mediocre or simplified single player campaigns, weak multiplayer and coop and a crafting system that's just feels out of place.
lol journey is not a game, its basically the rebirth of multi-media craze we had when CD-ROMS were first invented. The "indie game art" movment is bullshit. A bunch of hippies discover computers can render sound and images, they borrow a few cinematic techniques from cinema and call it a game.
The obsession with AAA is because AAA games are real videogames with more depth and content then a game like journey can ever hope to achieve. Having these hacks be called videogame developers is shameful.
There are a lot of weirdos now in the video game industry who want to make movies instead of games and I hate these people with a passion. They are the reason videogames no longer are challenging and most modern games have an abundance of in game quick-time events and passive elements.
lol journey is not a game, its basically the rebirth of multi-media craze we had when CD-ROMS were first invented. The "indie game art" movment is bullshit.
LOL
Well, I enjoyed this "non-game indie game art bullshit" a whole lot more than most AAA games I've played in a while.
The obsession with AAA is because AAA games are real videogames with more depth and content then a game like journey can ever hope to achieve. Having these hacks be called videogame developers is shameful.
LOL
My point was, regardless of what you think of Journey, is that you don't need a large team to make a great product if you make it with the core game play in mind and making it fun to play. Maybe every game doesn't need to have competitive multiplayer or coop or 10 dlcs or a huge open world and lots of replayability with 10 different classes?
Really? Most AAA games are shallower than a kiddie pool. The fact that Journey delivers a deep emotional story that's shared between players with no dialogue whatsoever is an achievement.
But why is this argument here anyway? It seems like there is a group of people that are having this meta-discussion that is crossing multiple threads with only a tangential connection to any of them.
I don't think the game industry is broken, it just changes too fast so studios that are slow to adapt run in to trouble.
I don't think the game industry is broken, it just changes too fast so studios that are slow to adapt run in to trouble.
All the dead studios are evidence that it is broken, I remember someone came up with a list of all the now defunct companies/studios that went under and it is HUGE.
Really? Most AAA games are shallower than a kiddie pool.
Don't kid yourself, Mass effect 2 despite it's lame plot is something journey can't even begin to approach. Only a moron would make your argument. I agree that all modern games are shallower then games of the past in terms of gameplay depth, but in terms of atmosphere, art direction, animation, story telling they are leagues above anything the indie art movement can put out.
Trying to pretend such hacked together projects are 'deep' is nonsense. Games are about participation, not passive movie based emotional experiences. When people talk about 'deep emotions' I want to smack them upside the head. I really want these games to split off into 'visual novels' genre unto itself and stop being called games because thats what 'games' like journey are, basically the rebirth of adventure games but with 90% less content then something like Double fine could put out.
The problem is modern gamers and game developers are confused because videogames can render hollywood quality audiovisuals and this causes them to confuse stimulation from passive images/sounds vs emotion you get from participating from challenging and interesting gameplay.
Syndicate barely made it our alive and is even a flop, yet XCOM kept it to old basics, added/removed a few things here and there for new age kiddies and presto, done! Did fantastic in the sale figures. One cost more then the other, when it could have made money if it's kept it small.
Syndicate didn't flop because of the genre, syndicate flopped because it was poorly made. I played it and it's obvious the team behind it had no idea how to make a first person shooter.
A bad game is a bad game regardless of the genre you release it in.
All the dead studios are evidence that it is broken, I remember someone came up with a list of all the now defunct companies/studios that went under and it is HUGE.
There are twice as many studios that did start-up on the other hand, and many of those that closed in that list (it's somewhere, here on PC) actually closed because big studio bought them for a premium fee, and fired everyone when they didn't know what to do with them, but then rehired the guys as an internal team inside their studios own company.
Then there is also the issue that many studios get renamed and aren't actually closed, but since gaming news in general is drama-fed for no reason, what you usually get is the news of Studio X closing, when it's getting re-branded instead.
When Justine said that studios have a hard time catching up to get onto par with the game, I think I can give the example of EA, when EA entered the casual market they paid and EXTREME premium to buy a few small studios, but ended up cannibalizing, breaking, etc said studios because they DIDN'T KNOW WHAT TO DO, this was uncharted territory to them, it also doesn't help they joined mid-game where everyone by then had a decent hold on this market.
But now that they have settled in pretty well, they're doing fine, so yes, EA did not know what to do, and had to catch up, but now that it has and all the internal studios from this side of things are doing much better (dare I say, even better then Zynga).
Petty Comment: I honestly think if you want better looking graphics in your games without breaking the bank, maybe making sure you bloody engine can Blur Cubemaps and has Sycnhed Normals would be a much better place to start rather then trying to make a next-gen engine that has radiosity in it, and won't run on next-gen systems at a tolerable rate.
Coo: if you think Journey is hacked together and a passive experience it shows that you never played it. But thanks for calling me a moron, sounds like you're going to make it far in life.
I guess That Game Company is a good example of doing things right, they signed a 3 title deal with Sony, finished off with a critical & commercial success and haven't had any layoffs.
Coo: if you think Journey is hacked together and a passive experience it shows that you never played it. But thanks for calling me a moron, sounds like you're going to make it far in life.
I guess That Game Company is a good example of doing things right, they signed a 3 title deal with Sony, finished off with a critical & commercial success and haven't had any layoffs.
Selling a crappy game to gameplay inexperienced kids is not a sign of brilliance, its merely taking advantage of fresh bodies for money. Making money and good game design are not required to be correlated. Otherwise Angry birds would be the best game of all time.
Haha yeah Coo you might want to play Journey for a bit in order to make a valid statement about it. There is much more to it that meets the eye, and ironically its simplicity and honesty actually remind me of that X-Factor that games used to have back when graphical power was so limited. (basically : simple core design with complexity cascading from it)
And while I agree that there is nothing more annoying than "games trying to be movies", Journey is not a culprit of this at all. Its rhythm is extremely well paced, and there is never a QTE or an oddly placed cinematic. Give it a chance!
Hopefully now that we reached a plateau in graphical fidelity things can settle down and move on. TF2 paved the way, and I think that its success has prepared gamers (old and young) to a return to bolder graphical choices.
Also interestingly enough even the most successful games like CoD are not successful because of how pretty they are. CoD could look much more worse than it does and still outperform BF3 simply because it makes no compromises - 60 fps and aiming accuracy is where it's at, and CoD is the only multiplayer console shooter delivering it. Numbers speak for themselves!
Even the menus in MW3 are the most simplistic things ever - a very simple 2D layout with small icons for the weapons and perks, all working towards fast and intuitive navigation. And then other games waste ressources doing fancy 3D crap ... but deep down, gamers don't really care and I think that's a great thing!
I guess my point is that, while I agree that it takes a superhuman workforce to get a great game out there today, there are still smart and valid shortcuts to take and maybe things would look less broken if ressources were generally being spent more adequately.
Selling a crappy game to gameplay inexperienced kids is not a sign of brilliance, its merely taking advantage of fresh bodies for money. Making money and good game design are not required to be correlated. Otherwise Angry birds would be the best game of all time.
notice how I said Critical and Commercial hit. I honestly can't see how you'd think Journey is a cash-in game, on paper it was a huge risk, Sony should be commended for giving That Game Company creative freedom.
I know you guys are pretty new to polycount, so just so you know I'm 32 and a professional artist in the game industry - I'm not a gameplay inexperienced kid or a moron. I'm pretty sure the inexperienced youth are obsessed with modern military shooters.
(and your welcome, this was your first post superb888, I had to approve it)
Yup, I agree with Justin. Also, I cannot think of any crappy game that sold well recently. Sure enough, some great games often don't sell, but the top sellers do tend to be excellent. And while Angry Birds is certainly not the best game ever (I find its refresh rate to be way to slow to be enjoyable, especially when compared to Tiny Wings), it still is a great game, found its audience and got the success it deserves.
If you still think journey is a crappy game you should watch the Extra Credits episode on it (pt1 and pt2)
basically the point they make is that Jouney's triumph is it's successful use of mechanics as narrative - something that few games even attempt and even fewer succeed at. Honestly, if anybody that says a game isn't a real game because it's got added emphasis on art and story-telling...suggesting this is evidence of "games trying to be movies" is absurd. movies and games accomplish the same goals in a lot of cases - story telling. They can both be done well or poorly, and it's less prevalent in games than film, but it's still there. there are those that push their narrative so hard and so counter to game-play that it's obnoxious...but journey is certainly not one of them.
I'm with Justin - i hope more "risky" games like journey will get the comfort of large publishers without the loss of creative control.
Yup, I agree with Justin. Also, I cannot think of any crappy game that sold well recently.
There's lots of great games that don't sell anything, many critically acclaimed games flopped at retail. I doubt anyone here would say planescape torment and Freespace 2 were bad games. Both flopped commercially despite critical acclaim. We could talk that it wasn't the game design itself but the aesthetics and theme that turned people off (sci-fi) and the weird foreign art people couldn't relate to for planescape.
Casual gamers tend to be aesthetically conservative, this is why they will buy baldurs gate but ignore planescape torment. Besides being exactly the same game with a different coat of paint.
So selling well is not correlated to good game design, it's a sign of aesthetic and thematic appeal. Many people on the forum confuse AESTHETICS with gameplay, they aren't the same.
For two plus minutes in journey you are walking and the guy jumps a few times, that isn't a game. The game objectively doesn't have a lot going on in it's world - not much to do in it. Hence it isn't really a game but more of a visual novel tech demo since the interactivity is so basic compared to better games all around it. It has no depth it is just frivilous shovelware for the superficial hippy crowd and young kids who don't have much dexterity just yet (which I don't have a problem with since they're kids) but for grown adults to call Journey amazing game is nonsense, it's shovelware.
If you still think journey is a crappy game you should watch the Extra Credits episode on it (pt1 and pt2)
Extra credits is all that is wrong with gaming. The original double dragon tells a much better story then journey while you actally get to play it!
For two minutes the 'narrative' in Journey is "I walked, I stood on a hill then I jumped a bit then I walked'
For two minutes of double dragon 'I was on the streets of X city, thugs came out of the door way, I punched one of the thugs then knee'd him in the face while barely dodging the other guy coming up behind me'.
Double dragon tells a much better narrative then Journey could ever tell visually with no text and you get to play it!
Well, you compared Journey to Mass Effect, which is a game about talking to people and trying to have sex with aliens.
You are falling into the mind projection fallacy - just because you think broccoli tastes bad, doesn't mean it tastes bad.
But I guess I'm just a moron, thank god this new guy came in to finally shed light on the golden truth that he's gleamed from years of playing video games. My opinion has obviously been corrupted for straying outside the borders of the AAA market and being to close to the actual development of video games. I shall cleanse my palette and purchase whatever the newest COD game is forthwith!
are we still on topic? So yeah, journey is crap/awesome depending on where you stand. What's that have to do with the games industry as a whole? Oh wait, nevermind. We're on page 4 already...
Haha Coo way to totally misread my point man. I know very well that many good games sell poorly, and that's a shame. I am just saying that almost all the time, the best selling ones also happen to be very good at what they do. Now of course some smart marketing can always push some more units of a stinker through the door, but in the long run good sales almost always come from quality.
Regarding Journey, I find it sad that you didn't enjoy it - it is quite a gem really. Now of course one has to be ready to take it in, and that sure isn't to everyone's taste. To each his own.
And yeah - insulting people (even indirectly) won't take you very far here. Opinions are one thing, but being aggressive for no reason is another. Chill out.
I agree that this is diverging a bit off topic. So to be back to the OP, I think that indeed, the That Game Company guys are very smart and this studio sure feels like a healthy creative place with strong integrity after the successful run they just had under Sony's wings. Cool stuff.
Extra credits is all that is wrong with gaming. The original double dragon tells a much better story then journey while you actally get to play it!
For two minutes the 'narrative' in Journey is "I walked, I stood on a hill then I jumped a bit then I walked'
For two minutes of double dragon 'I was on the streets of X city, thugs came out of the door way, I punched one of the thugs then knee'd him in the face while barely dodging the other guy coming up behind me'.
Double dragon tells a much better narrative then Journey could ever tell visually with no text and you get to play it!
I get that you've got this grudge against so called hippie indie pretentious games but I'm not sure you know what the term shovelware means man.
What's wrong with a narrative driven interactive experience being called a game? Depth of content has nothing to do with a something being a game or not.
anyway, compared to how the rest of the economy is doing - we must be doing something right. I think the planned AMD layoffs dwarf all the layoffs experienced by the game industry this year.
I think the problem with the game industry today is they fail to act on their audience's desire for a cheap and convenient way to get games. Most console games go for $60 a pop. You have to drive to the store to get them. You also have to juggle discs if you want to switch games. Digital distribution solves the last two, but what about the first? The $60 price tag is a bit daunting for people to take a risk on a game.
Valve has been finding the path of least resistance because they are a digital distributor and they play with prices all the time to draw in the hesitant customers. If AAA developers want to continue to be relevant in the market, they're going to have to bite the bullet and abandon the old guard model of retail. They are a digital medium, they should be publishing digitally. They need to let go of rigid $60 pricing and acknowledge that there are cheaper, more convenient entertainment sources out there that people are spending their limited funds on. Music, movies, mobile games, and so on are a fraction the price of games.
Developers should demand that hardware be set up to encourage digital distribution because it reduces overhead for everyone. Consoles should have larger storage options that don't cost more than equivalent PC components. A 500GB drive on a console should not cost significantly more than one for a PC.
Of course then people like me who enjoy the retail experience will be left behind, where are they in this new world? I guess they will take up the mantle of 'dinosaur' on tech-blogs.
I think the problem with the game industry today is they fail to act on their audience's desire for a cheap and convenient way to get games. Most console games go for $60 a pop. You have to drive to the store to get them. You also have to juggle discs if you want to switch games. Digital distribution solves the last two, but what about the first? The $60 price tag is a bit daunting for people to take a risk on a game.
Valve has been finding the path of least resistance because they are a digital distributor and they play with prices all the time to draw in the hesitant customers.
Yeah totally, I predict that the next consoles will be the last generation of the traditional home consoles as we know them. I think we'll move more towards smart tvs where you can rent or purchase games online like watching a movie on netflix and where the rendering happens at some renderfarm in a warehouse somewhere and the content is streamed to your TV OnLive style (but better!). The idea of working in 10 year hardware iterations feels pretty old school to me.
Once good internet connections are a bit more common in the rest of the world I could see something like this being viable.
the thing that pisses me off about digital distribution is this:
i have to pay the exact same amount to buy a digital version of a game, as i would have to pay to go and get the game from a store. the difference being - at the store i get a physical, tangible product. if the whole point of digital distribution is to cut costs, and give more secure DRM with less invasion, i want to know where the cut costs part comes in.
what pisses me off even more, and this isn't a games thing, it's a digital distribution thing... is that autodesk, adobe, and i think even pixologic, all charge the same numerical value in £ as they do in $ for their digital download licenses.
that's right... a digital license for photoshop is what, $950? it's also £950, for a digital download... are you fucking kidding me? that's over 50% increase in price just for being unfortunate enough not to be born in england! i could understand if it were a physical product, something heavy, that they have to ship, and the costs of shipping and customs taxes etc. is absorbed into the price. but it's not, it's a digital product that costs NOTHING extra for them to sell anywhere in the world.
it's literally just a rip-off. and they wonder why so many europeans are willing to pirate their shit.
the tangible product you buy in the store has a total value of $1 in production costs (remember the glorious times when games by default came with maps and proper manuals and all the stuff you nowadays only find in collector editions?). The rest of the money goes to distribution, the middle-man (aka store owner) and so on and the studio gets less money.
Devils Advocate: if you want to support your studio it may actually be better to buy online.
On the other hand you could also say "screw the studio, I only want them to earn X dollars, no matter where I buy (and I prefer that the games sales people get the rest if its more than at e.g. Steam)
To the opening post the situation is very complicated and the reasons change from Studio to Studio.... But in a nutshell these are some of the key reasons
The management running them are fools who don't have the pay the price if the studio goes under.
The hubris of the industry that thinks you need a mega studio. Yet, forget how much it actually costs to run one of them in terms of heating, AC, power, upkeep, etc. If you can afford it, then awesome. But far too many studios go under or are under duress due to the overhead cost of the building they are in.
If I am going to spend $60 plus on a game, it better damn well be worth it. Very few games this year have met that criteria for me. Where in the past, I'd buy the game where you say to yourself, "I know this will suck but oh what the hell, I'm curious."
The primary reason for the current difficulties of the game industry are a period of uninhibited growth combined with a constantly and radically changing retail landscape. Essentially, the game industry grew far more quickly than it probably should have, and the retail industry that the video game industry catered to changed far more than expected in the past decade. Radical growth combined with radical change, and few companies have been able to adapt quickly enough.
Now we have a retail establishment that is in a fairly drastic decline, and the game industry's major players are having to scale back. All of this combined with higher production quality requirements and an unreasonable expectation of lowered unit costs. Games have been getting more complex and complicated to produce, but no one seems willing to pay more for them on an individual unit basis.
The companies that are most stable are the ones who scaled their production properly from the beginning, and who anticipated the shift in retail. Valve is a prime example.
The cost of development is ridiculous these days especially when games are far more complicated to make these days than in yesteryear in some cases most of these game's are taking years to make..With budgets easily reaching into the millions. The amount that most games projects make back almost never truly covers the cost of what it took to generate them. Not unless the title is a big franchise.
To be honest most Triple A games are garbage, I don't give a damn about Halo 4 just another FPS ohh la dee da as if there wasn't an abundant source of those. Need Speed most wanted *yawn* Where's the innovation and creativity?
Give me Limbo or Audiosurf any day. I wonder what Cytek are up to now..... Any one? who's taking bets it's going to be yet another FPS.
4:40 - 6:50 is most pertinent, but his whole talk is very appropriate to the thread topic.
additionally: I'm appalled that anybody would suggest Extra Credits is the problem with games...I fail to see what the problem is with hoping that games will mature along a path that causes more thought and purpose in the final product...I enjoy a mindless beat 'em up as much as the next guy, but I have serious problems with the idea that putting some emotional depth into a game makes it less of a game...or that the vapid game with more active (note: active does not equal better or more appropriate) is in some way superior. Do you watch a lot of sitcoms? same deal.
Games are a form of entertainment - just like music, film or literature. They can't all be deep stories, and I love a good action movie, but what about a movie like Up? something that's not a kid's movie, tells an amazing story with tremendous emotional depth and social commentary...what if that had never happened and Pixar had just made a bug's life 2? ..maybe that's a bad example...pixar is actually good at sequels...
To be honest most Triple A games are garbage, I don't give a damn about Halo 4 just another FPS ohh la dee da as if there wasn't an abundant source of those. Need Speed most wanted *yawn* Where's the innovation and creativity?
Give me Limbo or Audiosurf any day. I wonder what Cytek are up to now..... Any one? who's taking bets it's going to be yet another FPS.
Yes.
Last year all we got were sequels. I was disappointed, thought 'hey, not much happened this year, but 2012 will kick ass!!!'
Well 2012 is almost over now and it's been the same story, except this time it's harder to be optimistic. Many big companies aren't making the returns that they expect, studios are closing or shifting focus and cutting back all over the place, people aren't exactly sure where things are heading and there's much less economic flexibility so everyone's scared to do anything different.
There's something more though. The spark is gone. I recently got out an old crt tv and hooked up an n64 and started to play. There's a big difference, I actually enjoy myself, I'm actually playing a game, they used to have these things called platformers, they kick ass. And none of this cinematic crap, where you're basically watching the game run on its own doing its own thing, no interactive novels.
I hear the term 'constantly changing demographic' and, to me, that's a bunch of bullshit. If you make something good it will do well, if Mario 64 never existed but were made today with a more polished modern look but the same mechanics, I think it'd still do amazing, I think people would still enjoy it tremendously, it'd be refreshing to not have something bogged down with cinematic and story baggage. I was playing it recently and was amazed at how responsive and interactive it felt, there are so many ways to maneuver, using limited buttons; this wasn't just nostalgia, honestly there's a quality that was there and it's missing.
What shits me is that industry is in the kind of state were we can yell and argue all day about how to make a good game, just like we do in this thread, when seriously there's more than enough games and developers to go around. There's more than enough to make silly platformers, mindless shooter roller coasters, big cinematic set-pieces, tight e-sports multiplayers, deep emotional experiences, games on console, games on pc, games on mobile etc etc
So we continue to argue about what is right, when it's all subjective. But I suppose when it's all a big business and the studios that don't make enough millions get shut down then something has to be the blame when unfortunately it's just too random for that.
>what a good game is; it's subjective
>what a bad game is; it's subjective
>a good game will sell; at the right place and right time
>a bad game will sell; at the right place at the right time
Replies
im sure if Tim had a choice between closing down his studio or laying off 10 people he would lay off the 10 people.
I think the point is (and of course this is a "in a perfect world" kind of statement) proper planning and management wouldn't put you in that position.
things still happen and nobody would blame one put in that decision for making the tough call...but it seems that this behavior has become fairly common practice, when it should be something only necessary when things go wrong.
bloating your staff to hit an unreasonable deadline and then cutting the employees loose as soon as a project is over is not the practice of a sustainable team or a responsible company.
If we want to pretend not to be completely project-driven as an industry we need to manage ourselves so that we're not. otherwise we're just temporary production teams playing house for a while.
This is what I'm thinking. Unless hire-and-fire is part of your business plan, then firing folks is usually a sign that some things aren't working out as planned. On the other hand, if that's how your business operates then it would be fair to tell people that this is gonna happen.
What sucks in our industry are companies who want you "to be part of the family", who tell you "how great things are" and a week later you get a pink slip, wondering where this is coming from when everything is supposed to be "so great". If companies were more up-front then there wouldn't be so many disillusioned artists. But then again, if you know this is gonna happening, you might not sign the contract in the first place. Even though, when you work in games the paranoia of sudden firings is always there somewhere in your head
I do agree with you i think its disgusting how some companies treat there employees, im guessing that why the Vancouver scene is basically all contracted work nowadays
The crazy thing is that in the games industry, loyalty isn't necessarily a matter of only money. There are plenty of people who just love making games, and would actually settle for a lower salary in order to make games all the time. Thanks to the rabid desire to work in games, most companies can get good, even great employees for very reasonable salaries. And most of those employees aren't usually looking to rush off to the next company to offer more money. They tend to want to finish whatever game they are working on before even considering other employment.
At the point, the burden of loyalty is really on the employer. And treating your staff in a seasonal manner is not going to cut it. Even if the industry starts moving more toward contract employment, most of these companies need to maintain a core team to provide consistency and direction to design. And that core team cannot be getting trimmed down and bloated up every year.
Unfortunately, that's where the money really comes into play. Per-hour, salaried employees are cheaper in the games industry than hourly contractors. And this isn't because the salaried employees are getting paid too little, or because the hourly contractors are charging too much. It's because the salaried employees are working so many hours. A salaried employee is much more affordable than a contractor when you can expect 80+ hours from them every week.
this is where I feel bad for games designers most of all. This is not to say all designers are the same, but for those whose focus is in games they have so few avenues to choose from and such a great opportunity to be exploited. Game designers aren't ordinary designers: when fired they can't just go get a job in a different field. they don't make art because they like art, they can't just code because they like code, they can only make games because they like games. Even if their skills were easily transferable I'm sure many won't feel fulfilled in non-games jobs.
Also, you have to look at the hundreds of successful mid / large sized companies that aren't laying people off also. We get a grim picture that is slightly disproportional to reality.
Unions don't have an impact on hire/fire directly and wouldn't have much impact on layoffs. They usually address working conditions: overtime, health benefits, retirement, wage levels, training, etc.
A union is a democratic organization, so the members vote on what is important to them and bargain collectively to get the working conditions they want. Every union is different.
Mid-size studios are pretty much dead because the big publishers are almost exclusively funding mega-projects. NPD numbers show a drop in the overall volume of game sales mostly due to a drop in the production of mid-size games.
Indie developers are having a much bigger impact on game development. The more indies, the better.
http://www.cnn.com/2012/11/09/tech/gaming-gadgets/console-gaming-dead/index.html?hpt=hp_bn5
Game industries growth over the last 10 years is a chimera, you have many people who play only certain videogames because of differences in aesthetic tastes.
You have people who JUST play call of duty, you have people who JUST play World of warcraft.
The size of the 'true gamer' market (people who play a wide variety of games) is smaller then people who stick to a few core genre's. This is why Call of duty is such a phenomenon. I was bored of first person shooters after 2000 but newer generations who never grew up on PC games, they are experiencing shooters for the first time. There is a lot of generational turn-over that causes the same games to be remade because there's always a fresh batch of kiddies with no gaming experience to take the place of older gamers.
Maybe, but don't forget that when you're trying to pull every single trick in the book to get good looking models which are limited to 4-5 year old budget into your kaput engine which doesn't read certain data or formats correctly, you're just asking for extra cost, if you spend an extra 15 minutes (and I'm being charitable here) in having your artist run through a few loops before finalizing the models, that 15 minute, when crossed with say 10 artists, will be about 150 minutes, if that's per asset from an artist, and each artist has to make 10 assets, that's 1500 minutes in total from all these peeps, that time and money being spent from a person and the company in doing something, that on an efficient pipeline, engine and process wouldn't have to go through, so there is only so much procedural process can save your ass.
Then there is the cost of non-unified systems of the consoles, not to mention 'entry' fee, 40K for a patch may not sound much on paper, but if you're going to be pushing a patch every few weeks, it's going to make a nice dent.
And trust, I have seen my fair of share of procedural middle-ware that are used as miracle cures, before it all comes crashing down at the last minute due to many internal issues, not to mention, their limitations which will almost always force on-site training or hiring a new person to work on it.
Also; There is a large difference between hiring loads of people to create a massive/polished game, vs. hiring loads of people because everyone has some very specific small job to do, while still asking for a flat-base salary. It's kinda like how many people hire ONLY textures artist, or ONLY sculptors, etc. when a competent artist should be able to do those things (unless you're looking for say a Sculptor who is also a Concept artist and will help you define color scheme's and material definition ideas, in which case they're not ONLY sculptors).
Then some studios also do this extremely stupid step of 'scanning' assets before forwarding it to an artist so he can process it game viable iteration. Games like LA Noire has reasons, and you can see results, yet scanning a claymade monster, from which the artist will need to add the extra detail and color later on just is asking for extra cost for no reason. Maybe this was viable in the 90's, when organic sculpting tools were dead in the market, but now?
I agree with the idea of greying-nation, in which generation get older while new ones move in, so you have to cater to the new ones at one point, but at the same time, why reinvent and reinvest large numbers of wad in something to make it different? I mean look at Syndicate and XCOM debacle? Syndicate barely made it our alive and is even a flop, yet XCOM kept it to old basics, added/removed a few things here and there for new age kiddies and presto, done! Did fantastic in the sale figures. One cost more then the other, when it could have made money if it's kept it small.
In terms of procedural generation, it never was meant to be a cure-all hence I said it's going to take DECADES to bring down costs. Perhaps I should have just said "improvement in tools and techniques" since that is what I was thinking when I said that.
Basically - solving major problems and getting rid of bottle necks, still going to take decades though. The reason THQ and many other developers went under was because of the relentless advancement of hardware power. Even iD software had massive problems even just finishing rage, rage was a disaster as a game because they just didn't have the skills/funds/know how. This is coming from a former 'legend' in video game development. It just goes to show you game production times have exceeded even the most talented of humans to make within reasonable time frames.
Developers were un-prepared to make "virtual movie like action games" like call of duty that many people have been trying to ape. The skills required to make modern games are basically superhuman and thats why we've seen so many flame outs over the last decade, studios were dying left and right even at the end of the mid to late 90's lets not forget.
Volition was on the brink after interplay went belly up, Outrage (who made Descent 3) got disbanded when Descent 3 didn't sell as well as they wanted. That was largely because of the advancement of hardware power, you needed to sell an insane amount of more games to break even and even more to profit. Looking back developers and publishers seemed almost dangerously naive, there was the whole Daikatana incident, then duke nukem forever which was vaporware for 12 years. These stories aren't exactly uncommon.
All those closed studios couldn't afford to make shiny graphics due to lack of talent, funds, etc.
CPU/GPU power is the big elephant in the room, you might say hardware killed videogame business model for low to mid range games for consoles and PC's.
Well, yeah, but not every team needs to be the size of the Assassins Creed team or Diablos, BF3s or CoDs. You could still make great games like Journey on a high end console and make it look good, you don't have to utilize every ounce of computing power to make a realistic type of game.
I don't get the obsession publishers and AAA game develeopers in general seem to have with pushing everything into every game they make (crafting, coop, competitive multiplayer with a leveling system a la CoD, a single player campaign with dlcs etc).
If you want to make a game like that then yeah, you'll need 200-1000 people working on it for a couple of years but if you just take one of those elements then you probably don't need more than 50 people and you can still make it a really great product. Sometimes I feel like the addition of all these extra game modes and also our expectations of games are diluting the finished product and we end up with mediocre or simplified single player campaigns, weak multiplayer and coop and a crafting system that's just feels out of place.
lol journey is not a game, its basically the rebirth of multi-media craze we had when CD-ROMS were first invented. The "indie game art" movment is bullshit. A bunch of hippies discover computers can render sound and images, they borrow a few cinematic techniques from cinema and call it a game.
The obsession with AAA is because AAA games are real videogames with more depth and content then a game like journey can ever hope to achieve. Having these hacks be called videogame developers is shameful.
There are a lot of weirdos now in the video game industry who want to make movies instead of games and I hate these people with a passion. They are the reason videogames no longer are challenging and most modern games have an abundance of in game quick-time events and passive elements.
LOL
Well, I enjoyed this "non-game indie game art bullshit" a whole lot more than most AAA games I've played in a while.
LOL
My point was, regardless of what you think of Journey, is that you don't need a large team to make a great product if you make it with the core game play in mind and making it fun to play. Maybe every game doesn't need to have competitive multiplayer or coop or 10 dlcs or a huge open world and lots of replayability with 10 different classes?
But why is this argument here anyway? It seems like there is a group of people that are having this meta-discussion that is crossing multiple threads with only a tangential connection to any of them.
I don't think the game industry is broken, it just changes too fast so studios that are slow to adapt run in to trouble.
All the dead studios are evidence that it is broken, I remember someone came up with a list of all the now defunct companies/studios that went under and it is HUGE.
Don't kid yourself, Mass effect 2 despite it's lame plot is something journey can't even begin to approach. Only a moron would make your argument. I agree that all modern games are shallower then games of the past in terms of gameplay depth, but in terms of atmosphere, art direction, animation, story telling they are leagues above anything the indie art movement can put out.
Trying to pretend such hacked together projects are 'deep' is nonsense. Games are about participation, not passive movie based emotional experiences. When people talk about 'deep emotions' I want to smack them upside the head. I really want these games to split off into 'visual novels' genre unto itself and stop being called games because thats what 'games' like journey are, basically the rebirth of adventure games but with 90% less content then something like Double fine could put out.
The problem is modern gamers and game developers are confused because videogames can render hollywood quality audiovisuals and this causes them to confuse stimulation from passive images/sounds vs emotion you get from participating from challenging and interesting gameplay.
Syndicate didn't flop because of the genre, syndicate flopped because it was poorly made. I played it and it's obvious the team behind it had no idea how to make a first person shooter.
A bad game is a bad game regardless of the genre you release it in.
Then there is also the issue that many studios get renamed and aren't actually closed, but since gaming news in general is drama-fed for no reason, what you usually get is the news of Studio X closing, when it's getting re-branded instead.
When Justine said that studios have a hard time catching up to get onto par with the game, I think I can give the example of EA, when EA entered the casual market they paid and EXTREME premium to buy a few small studios, but ended up cannibalizing, breaking, etc said studios because they DIDN'T KNOW WHAT TO DO, this was uncharted territory to them, it also doesn't help they joined mid-game where everyone by then had a decent hold on this market.
But now that they have settled in pretty well, they're doing fine, so yes, EA did not know what to do, and had to catch up, but now that it has and all the internal studios from this side of things are doing much better (dare I say, even better then Zynga).
Petty Comment: I honestly think if you want better looking graphics in your games without breaking the bank, maybe making sure you bloody engine can Blur Cubemaps and has Sycnhed Normals would be a much better place to start rather then trying to make a next-gen engine that has radiosity in it, and won't run on next-gen systems at a tolerable rate.
I guess That Game Company is a good example of doing things right, they signed a 3 title deal with Sony, finished off with a critical & commercial success and haven't had any layoffs.
Selling a crappy game to gameplay inexperienced kids is not a sign of brilliance, its merely taking advantage of fresh bodies for money. Making money and good game design are not required to be correlated. Otherwise Angry birds would be the best game of all time.
And while I agree that there is nothing more annoying than "games trying to be movies", Journey is not a culprit of this at all. Its rhythm is extremely well paced, and there is never a QTE or an oddly placed cinematic. Give it a chance!
Hopefully now that we reached a plateau in graphical fidelity things can settle down and move on. TF2 paved the way, and I think that its success has prepared gamers (old and young) to a return to bolder graphical choices.
Also interestingly enough even the most successful games like CoD are not successful because of how pretty they are. CoD could look much more worse than it does and still outperform BF3 simply because it makes no compromises - 60 fps and aiming accuracy is where it's at, and CoD is the only multiplayer console shooter delivering it. Numbers speak for themselves!
Even the menus in MW3 are the most simplistic things ever - a very simple 2D layout with small icons for the weapons and perks, all working towards fast and intuitive navigation. And then other games waste ressources doing fancy 3D crap ... but deep down, gamers don't really care and I think that's a great thing!
I guess my point is that, while I agree that it takes a superhuman workforce to get a great game out there today, there are still smart and valid shortcuts to take and maybe things would look less broken if ressources were generally being spent more adequately.
notice how I said Critical and Commercial hit. I honestly can't see how you'd think Journey is a cash-in game, on paper it was a huge risk, Sony should be commended for giving That Game Company creative freedom.
I know you guys are pretty new to polycount, so just so you know I'm 32 and a professional artist in the game industry - I'm not a gameplay inexperienced kid or a moron. I'm pretty sure the inexperienced youth are obsessed with modern military shooters.
(and your welcome, this was your first post superb888, I had to approve it)
basically the point they make is that Jouney's triumph is it's successful use of mechanics as narrative - something that few games even attempt and even fewer succeed at. Honestly, if anybody that says a game isn't a real game because it's got added emphasis on art and story-telling...suggesting this is evidence of "games trying to be movies" is absurd. movies and games accomplish the same goals in a lot of cases - story telling. They can both be done well or poorly, and it's less prevalent in games than film, but it's still there. there are those that push their narrative so hard and so counter to game-play that it's obnoxious...but journey is certainly not one of them.
I'm with Justin - i hope more "risky" games like journey will get the comfort of large publishers without the loss of creative control.
There's lots of great games that don't sell anything, many critically acclaimed games flopped at retail. I doubt anyone here would say planescape torment and Freespace 2 were bad games. Both flopped commercially despite critical acclaim. We could talk that it wasn't the game design itself but the aesthetics and theme that turned people off (sci-fi) and the weird foreign art people couldn't relate to for planescape.
Casual gamers tend to be aesthetically conservative, this is why they will buy baldurs gate but ignore planescape torment. Besides being exactly the same game with a different coat of paint.
So selling well is not correlated to good game design, it's a sign of aesthetic and thematic appeal. Many people on the forum confuse AESTHETICS with gameplay, they aren't the same.
Here's a gameplay video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=LUoztAn0r0k#t=133s
For two plus minutes in journey you are walking and the guy jumps a few times, that isn't a game. The game objectively doesn't have a lot going on in it's world - not much to do in it. Hence it isn't really a game but more of a visual novel tech demo since the interactivity is so basic compared to better games all around it. It has no depth it is just frivilous shovelware for the superficial hippy crowd and young kids who don't have much dexterity just yet (which I don't have a problem with since they're kids) but for grown adults to call Journey amazing game is nonsense, it's shovelware.
Extra credits is all that is wrong with gaming. The original double dragon tells a much better story then journey while you actally get to play it!
For two minutes the 'narrative' in Journey is "I walked, I stood on a hill then I jumped a bit then I walked'
For two minutes of double dragon 'I was on the streets of X city, thugs came out of the door way, I punched one of the thugs then knee'd him in the face while barely dodging the other guy coming up behind me'.
Double dragon tells a much better narrative then Journey could ever tell visually with no text and you get to play it!
You are falling into the mind projection fallacy - just because you think broccoli tastes bad, doesn't mean it tastes bad.
But I guess I'm just a moron, thank god this new guy came in to finally shed light on the golden truth that he's gleamed from years of playing video games. My opinion has obviously been corrupted for straying outside the borders of the AAA market and being to close to the actual development of video games. I shall cleanse my palette and purchase whatever the newest COD game is forthwith!
Regarding Journey, I find it sad that you didn't enjoy it - it is quite a gem really. Now of course one has to be ready to take it in, and that sure isn't to everyone's taste. To each his own.
And yeah - insulting people (even indirectly) won't take you very far here. Opinions are one thing, but being aggressive for no reason is another. Chill out.
I agree that this is diverging a bit off topic. So to be back to the OP, I think that indeed, the That Game Company guys are very smart and this studio sure feels like a healthy creative place with strong integrity after the successful run they just had under Sony's wings. Cool stuff.
I get that you've got this grudge against so called hippie indie pretentious games but I'm not sure you know what the term shovelware means man.
What's wrong with a narrative driven interactive experience being called a game? Depth of content has nothing to do with a something being a game or not.
Valve has been finding the path of least resistance because they are a digital distributor and they play with prices all the time to draw in the hesitant customers. If AAA developers want to continue to be relevant in the market, they're going to have to bite the bullet and abandon the old guard model of retail. They are a digital medium, they should be publishing digitally. They need to let go of rigid $60 pricing and acknowledge that there are cheaper, more convenient entertainment sources out there that people are spending their limited funds on. Music, movies, mobile games, and so on are a fraction the price of games.
Developers should demand that hardware be set up to encourage digital distribution because it reduces overhead for everyone. Consoles should have larger storage options that don't cost more than equivalent PC components. A 500GB drive on a console should not cost significantly more than one for a PC.
Yeah totally, I predict that the next consoles will be the last generation of the traditional home consoles as we know them. I think we'll move more towards smart tvs where you can rent or purchase games online like watching a movie on netflix and where the rendering happens at some renderfarm in a warehouse somewhere and the content is streamed to your TV OnLive style (but better!). The idea of working in 10 year hardware iterations feels pretty old school to me.
Once good internet connections are a bit more common in the rest of the world I could see something like this being viable.
i have to pay the exact same amount to buy a digital version of a game, as i would have to pay to go and get the game from a store. the difference being - at the store i get a physical, tangible product. if the whole point of digital distribution is to cut costs, and give more secure DRM with less invasion, i want to know where the cut costs part comes in.
what pisses me off even more, and this isn't a games thing, it's a digital distribution thing... is that autodesk, adobe, and i think even pixologic, all charge the same numerical value in £ as they do in $ for their digital download licenses.
that's right... a digital license for photoshop is what, $950? it's also £950, for a digital download... are you fucking kidding me? that's over 50% increase in price just for being unfortunate enough not to be born in england! i could understand if it were a physical product, something heavy, that they have to ship, and the costs of shipping and customs taxes etc. is absorbed into the price. but it's not, it's a digital product that costs NOTHING extra for them to sell anywhere in the world.
it's literally just a rip-off. and they wonder why so many europeans are willing to pirate their shit.
Devils Advocate: if you want to support your studio it may actually be better to buy online.
On the other hand you could also say "screw the studio, I only want them to earn X dollars, no matter where I buy (and I prefer that the games sales people get the rest if its more than at e.g. Steam)
The cost of development is ridiculous these days especially when games are far more complicated to make these days than in yesteryear in some cases most of these game's are taking years to make..With budgets easily reaching into the millions. The amount that most games projects make back almost never truly covers the cost of what it took to generate them. Not unless the title is a big franchise.
To be honest most Triple A games are garbage, I don't give a damn about Halo 4 just another FPS ohh la dee da as if there wasn't an abundant source of those. Need Speed most wanted *yawn* Where's the innovation and creativity?
Give me Limbo or Audiosurf any day. I wonder what Cytek are up to now..... Any one? who's taking bets it's going to be yet another FPS.
4:40 - 6:50 is most pertinent, but his whole talk is very appropriate to the thread topic.
additionally: I'm appalled that anybody would suggest Extra Credits is the problem with games...I fail to see what the problem is with hoping that games will mature along a path that causes more thought and purpose in the final product...I enjoy a mindless beat 'em up as much as the next guy, but I have serious problems with the idea that putting some emotional depth into a game makes it less of a game...or that the vapid game with more active (note: active does not equal better or more appropriate) is in some way superior. Do you watch a lot of sitcoms? same deal.
Games are a form of entertainment - just like music, film or literature. They can't all be deep stories, and I love a good action movie, but what about a movie like Up? something that's not a kid's movie, tells an amazing story with tremendous emotional depth and social commentary...what if that had never happened and Pixar had just made a bug's life 2? ..maybe that's a bad example...pixar is actually good at sequels...
Yes.
Last year all we got were sequels. I was disappointed, thought 'hey, not much happened this year, but 2012 will kick ass!!!'
Well 2012 is almost over now and it's been the same story, except this time it's harder to be optimistic. Many big companies aren't making the returns that they expect, studios are closing or shifting focus and cutting back all over the place, people aren't exactly sure where things are heading and there's much less economic flexibility so everyone's scared to do anything different.
There's something more though. The spark is gone. I recently got out an old crt tv and hooked up an n64 and started to play. There's a big difference, I actually enjoy myself, I'm actually playing a game, they used to have these things called platformers, they kick ass. And none of this cinematic crap, where you're basically watching the game run on its own doing its own thing, no interactive novels.
I hear the term 'constantly changing demographic' and, to me, that's a bunch of bullshit. If you make something good it will do well, if Mario 64 never existed but were made today with a more polished modern look but the same mechanics, I think it'd still do amazing, I think people would still enjoy it tremendously, it'd be refreshing to not have something bogged down with cinematic and story baggage. I was playing it recently and was amazed at how responsive and interactive it felt, there are so many ways to maneuver, using limited buttons; this wasn't just nostalgia, honestly there's a quality that was there and it's missing.
So we continue to argue about what is right, when it's all subjective. But I suppose when it's all a big business and the studios that don't make enough millions get shut down then something has to be the blame when unfortunately it's just too random for that.
>what a good game is; it's subjective
>what a bad game is; it's subjective
>a good game will sell; at the right place and right time
>a bad game will sell; at the right place at the right time